Gadget enthusiasts agree: Both the Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7 have a lot to offer. But, while one provides an impressive entertainment experience, the other gets work done and gets it done quickly. Which one you choose depends on your business and your users.
If you’re thinking about issuing Android tablets to your employees, fortunately for you, you have a lot of options. The latest and greatest to join the mix? Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD and Google’s Nexus 7, both of the 7″, WiFi-only variety.
The Kindle Fire HD has a leg up on its competition when it comes to entertainment value because of its onboard speakers, HDMI-out port for streaming content to a TV or monitor, and of course, Amazon’s impressive inventory of movies and books.
But do business users need all that? Probably not.
Unless your users watch movies or read books all day as part of their job, you’ll want to go with the Nexus 7. According to reviewers, it’s much more suited to the needs of business users.
For example, its tight integration with Google apps such as Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Drive means business users can switch between tablet, phone and computer without batting an eyelash.
And with Google Maps built-in, the Nexus 7 makes a great tool for getting around and getting work done while traveling. The Kindle HD doesn’t offer an integrated Map app, a serious strike against it for many business users.
The Nexus 7 doesn’t come with as much storage space as the Kindle – 8GB vs. 16GB for the same $199 base price – but if your company’s employees are heavy users of cloud-based apps and don’t normally store content or files locally, they’ll have plenty to work with.
The fast and responsive user experience of the Nexus 7 is another thing users will appreciate. The Nexus 7′s quad-core CPU is faster than the Kindle’s dual-core processor. That, plus the fact that it runs the Jelly Bean operating system, the most advanced Android OS to date, make the user experience much more “elegant” and “efficient” than the Kindle’s, as one Nexus 7 review put it.
If the point of issuing tablets to your employees is to help them be more productive whenever and wherever, industry experts agree the Nexus 7 fits the bill.